Failed Policies of Conservatives

A letter to my senators and representative

Dear Senators Grassley and Ernst & Representative Nunn,

I have always loved learning about history. Mt leisure reading time when I was working was mostly about reading biographies of history makers. Band of Brothers, It Doesn’t Take A Hero, Books on our presidents, and America history would satisfy my hunger. Since I retired from 35 years as a public educator, my reading on history increased and I have read somewhere over 100 well researched and documented books on the American Experience. Sadly, I must report that there is nothing and I mean nothing this current administration, the Heritage Foundation, and the Republican party is doing to the government that has not been tried before. And what does history show of those actions?

Recessions, discrimination, rights for a few, immigration selection, isolation, economic opportunity for a select few (white males), and international disrespect. Even with the conservatives attempts to keep people out and down, Americans continued to push forward because the people were able to change the leadership. However, never before has the power to determine how the government runs been given over to an outsider so blatantly as what we are seeing. The road to the next Great Republican Depression/Recession is well underway and the guardrails to prevent such a failure are being dismantled right before our eyes and what are you doing about it? Are you speaking out or cowering down? Are you willing to allow one man (Musk) who has been given carte blanche power, along with the Heritage Foundation to take America back to some of the darkest times our history?

Every policy proposed in Project 2025 has been tried before. Where did those policies lead? Let’s go backwards in time.

Most recently, the pandemic of 2020 where the republicans as a party decided to defy science and let a virus run wild against the people when it was discovered who it affected the most. Some even stated publicly that older people would be happy to die rather than ruin the economy for their children (Dan Patrick of Texas). The party itself became a den of anti-science and thus anti-government. Then we go back to the 2008 financial crisis, again a conservative engineered crisis brough on by deregulation of the financial industry lead by the so-called Americans for Prosperity group and their many other non-profit grifting organizations. Then there was the tech bubble collapse, again because of anti-regulations that allowed these business people to run a wild west show. The 1987 Stock crash – again due to the republican party policies of deregulation. Now the big one – the Great Republican Depression of 1929-1939 brought on by the very same policies being put forth right now so prominently proposed in Project 2025 (which the POTUS denied knowledge). Before that we had recessions/depressions in the 1890s – same policies. Before that the conservatives lead the way in slavery expansion as the U.S. grew across the continent even after agreeing to not growing the institution further with the Missouri Compromise. The conservative policies (states’ rights to keep and then expand slavery) lead to the Civil War when the conservatives of the South seceded and then provided the spark to the conflict when they fired the first shots.

Can you see my concern? Where is this leading? A more perfect Union? Liberty and justice for all? Maybe we are not repeating history, but the rhyme is strong. As writer Tom Nichols wrote in the Atlantic in a past issue “Americans under trump will act more proud to be an American, but they will little of which to be proud.” We are there, it seems.